Tuesday into Wednesday

The latest conversation on the US Supreme Court up on Slate – really interested. I liked Prof. Tim Wu’s analysis of the Ten Commandments and the Grokster cases – that you have Breyer and O’Connor concerned about our maintaining manners – extremes are bad.

The passing of Shelby Foote, the writer/commentator on Ken Burn’s “Civil War.”

The NY Times’ Sewell Chan on the latest plans to change the rules of conduct in the subways:

Moving between cars – as well as resting one’s feet on the seats, sipping from an open container (even a cup of coffee) and straddling a bicycle while riding the subway – will be prohibited under a new set of passenger rules adopted by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s transit committee yesterday, the first such rule changes since 1994.

While riding between cars is already forbidden, managers at the authority said they wanted to make clear that even quickly darting from one car to another while the train is in motion is dangerous.

There is only one way, they said, to move safely to another car – exiting the train at the next station and then quickly re-entering it, even if passengers making a such a dash could face other perils, like tripping, smashing a finger or losing a purse between rapidly shutting doors.

Hmm. Yeah, that’s pretty much what I do without the MTA telling me to do – I go in and out at the platform, not between cars (which really is scary – to me anyway). I understand the rules, but I don’t necessarily think you’d need them. Those posters of “Don’t be Stupid and Risk Dying” seem pretty strong enough (yeah, I actually do look at those posters in the subway).

Enjoy Wednesday, even if the humidity around here sucks…